


Children of Mother Earth - Thea Beckman

by daiyu4yu



Series: Children of mother Earth book translations [1]
Category: Kinderen van Moeder Aarde | Children of Mother Earth - Thea Beckman
Genre: English, F/M, Futuristic, Gen, Journey, Nederlands | Dutch, Post-Apocalypse, Tags May Change, Translation, Warnings May Change, children of mother earth, expedition - Freeform, greenland, thea beckman
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27606379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daiyu4yu/pseuds/daiyu4yu
Summary: All rights belong to Thea Beckman and the publishing company Lemniscaat Rotterdam. I do not own these characters or the story, I simply translated them into English since it was never translated. It is one of my favourite stories from when I was a young, but it is a book for all ages and more people should get the chance to read it. Please excuse any mistakes in my English. (The original is in dutch, but it is also available in german)600 years after the 3rd world war: due to a nuclear war, has the earth tilted and the poles have moved. Our world is almost destroyed; only a few groups of people have survived. The Climate has completely changed. The ice on Greenland has molten and the Island gets a lovely climate...Thule, formerly Greenland, has a rich Nature. Mother Earth is treated with respect. The country is ruled by women: by the Konega and the Womens council. Men have almost no say. History has taught they cant handle power. Christian, the Konega's son, cant succeed her. He is happy, but rebels sometimes. The worst thing is, he cant marry Thura, whom he loves.One day the peace is roughly disturbed, an unknown expedition ship arrives. From the Baden Empire, in former Europe. They arent friendly
Relationships: Christian/Thura
Series: Children of mother Earth book translations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018345





	Children of Mother Earth - Thea Beckman

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kinderen van Moeder Aarde](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/714520) by Thea Beckman. 



> Hi, please enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nuclear war destroys earth and reshapes it. A new society rises in Greenland.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is probably the shortest of all, since it's a four and a half page long description of the apocalypse and how the world kinda recovered, with no dialogue. I guess it's more of a prologue, the real story starts after this.

THE GREAT DISASTER

It had to happen sometime: the Third World War.  
Over half a century rulers and military people lied to the population about the consequences of a nuclear war. It would all be fine. A few million dead, yes, that was inevitable. A colossal destruction, yes, of course! But even that would be manageable. Humanity already had two big world wars behind them in the twentieth century; back then pessimists had predicted the end of civilization too, and what happened? Millions of victims, Europe in ruins, but immediately afterwards the survivors started rebuilding and golden times of prosperity arrived. That would undoubtedly be the case after the Third World War. As soon as it was over world-leaders and rulers would emerge with their families and secret files from the bomb free shelters, take control and be the masters of the new Golden Age. Who had power then, would be sitting on velvet. The dead would be solemnly remembered with flower wreaths, honorgraves and speeches, and the new world could start rebuilding with fresh courage. Even more beautiful, greater and higher would the destroyed cities rise from the ashes. And all the problems concerning the slum clearance and overpopulation would be solved.

No, the men (of course they were men) with their fingers on the red buttons and purple phones weren't scared. The moment the great conflict would break out they would be safely underground. Who had to stay above ground, would maybe have a difficult time for a few weeks, maybe they would die, but a world-population of many billions of people was not killed overnight. There would be plenty of survivors to start over and to cheer on the emerged rulers when they drove by in bulletproof cars...

It ended differently.

Never before had humanity experienced a real nuclear war, and nobody had a real idea of the consequences. The doomsayers and pessimists had said: the earth will remain desolate and empty, _nothing_ will survive. The optimists -see above- counted on a real victory and a nice new start. All of them were wrong.

At first the nuclear war didn't seem so bad. A few smaller nations that came to blows, and about whom no one knew they possessed a few A-bombs, lost their self-control at a certain point and destroyed each other's capital city and oil-installations. For three weeks the world's superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States, balanced on the edge of madness. Were it truly the government leaders of those small states that had given the order, or were the gentlemen of the Kremlin (or as the other side said: Washington) behind it? The mistrust grew and grew and with it the fear for each other's destructive power. Who would let the mistrust turn into panic first and act? In all the big cities in the world massive demonstrations were held, all the normal people who didn't have access to the bomb-shelters demanded disarmament. Strikes, uproar, riots and more demonstrations paralyzed daily life. And one day it started, two sides at once. The people hid, under tables and in closets. The generals, colonels, high officers and government officials went into hiding with their presidents, royal families and ministers underground and gave orders. The war hysteria, repressed for so long, at the same time fueled for so long, had become reality in one fell swoop.

The first day about two billion people died, in unimaginable fire-streams, cities that had turned in to glowing furnaces, in burning forests and collapsing buildings. The second day was just as bad, the third day... the third day H-bombs, neutron-bombs, and A-bombs that were automatically launched and automatically or computer controlled still exploded and found their targets. Destroyed space-satellites fell to earth, burning, glowing. From destroyed chemical factories bacteria and poisons escaped that were kept in reserve. The shelters that were hewn deep in the rock shuddered and squeaked, but they held. The rulers had no notion of what was happening above ground. It must be a hell, but what kind of hell?

After three days only nearly half of the world's population survived - or had a chance of survival, because the amount of dying, heavily wounded and sick was no longer countable. Cities, military bases, industrial complexes, airports and supermarkets were wiped of the face of the earth. But now everything had been launched, shot and exploded what had been in storage and the war was over. Who had won no one knew, and nobody cared. 

There was one aspect the scientist had not held into account: Mother Earth's reaction. Because on the third day it really started...

A twenty megaton H-bomb, computer controlled and calculated to find a military base in Alaska with it's infrared seeker, had fallen and exploded in one of the biggest functioning volcanoes in that area: the Katmai crater. The explosion didn't just blow up the mountain but destroyed an area of over four thousand square kilometers ~~_(approximately 1545 square miles or 988 421 acres for those who don't know metric ;) )_~~ and tore off the southern part of Alaska, after which it disappeared in the sea. The tidal wave that followed destroyed most of British Columbia (in West-Canada) and the Chukchi peninsula of Siberia ~~_(in the text it is named djoekdjes, which even in dutch doesn't exist, so is did some research and deducted it must be this one, in dutch it is called tsjoektsjen, which sounds most alike what is written in the text and geography wise also somewhat fits. Am I putting too much effort into this?)_~~. It didn't stop there. The shock wave multiplied inside, and set the magma-mantle underneath the earth plates in motion and caused an immense turmoil underneath the Earth's solid crust.The same thing happened almost at the same time with a fifteen megaton bomb that, led by a similar infrared mechanism, landed in the crater of Mount Fuji _~~(same thing happened here, but this one was easier to google. In the text it said foudsji-san)~~_ near Tokyo/Yokohama. This bomb the Japanese Island Honshu in tow, caused massive eruptions from other volcanoes on the mountain ridge and left no stone unturned. Japan out of the picture. Here too the shock wave multiplied inside.

Maybe more nuclear bombs landed in active volcanoes or in fracture areas where the Earth's crust thin was. Anyway, the powers of nature that were unleashed by these shocks, had unimaginable consequences. Nobody who was still alive understood where those giant tidal-waves, earthquakes, volcano eruptions and all-devastating tornadoes came from. Very little people got the time to think about it. Mother Earth had lost her balance. She tilted.

The chain-reaction in the magma-mantle that caused the earth's axis to shift with a jerk came with an accumulation of natural disasters humanity had never known. All of the still standing dams succumbed, tidal waves of hundreds of meters high ~~_(100 meters is 328 feet)_~~ beat over coasts and washed away everything that still lived or stood. California disappeared in sea for a large part, peninsulas were torn apart from the mainland, colossal rock formations blocked valleys, low areas were flooded and turned into salty swamps. Continents tore on fracture lines, lakes emptied. Nuclear bomb-shelters were crushed like thin wooden boxes, flooded or covered in stone avalanches. Snowstorms, hailstorms, devastating thunderstorms, hurricanes whose power was no longer measurable, sea-quakes and earth shakes, and rivers whose paths changed, torn off glaciers and ash-rains destroyed who after the three day war thought themselves among the living.

The entire atmosphere was saturated with dust, which was blown kilometers high. That layer of dust prevented sunlight from getting to the earth, which caused a small Ice-Age to form in the first years after the disaster. The cold made many more victims...

But humanity is tough. Still there were survivors. In faraway areas, sheltered valleys, in Canada, on Greenland, in Central-Europe people still lived: scared, cold, hungry, desperate. It took them years to realize something fundamental had changed on earth. The poles had moved, as well as the equator.

In the ever colder Russia, troops of wandering farmers traveled along broken train-tracks or tried to wrestle a meager harvest from the scorched earth. Here, there, everywhere groups of people were trying to stay alive, reproduce, build a new existence with primitive resources. Nobody could use electricity; the power stations were destroyed and there was no fuel. Most technicians, engineers and scholars were dead. Gasoline or Diesel oil wasn't available either; everywhere among the rubble superfluous vehicles stood, rusting. For now science was done.

After the dust had settled - which took years- and the sun broke through, the wonder of the tilted earth became visible. The former poles started melting, while in other places new cold areas formed: the North Pole came to lie at the height of the former Japan, which also made China freeze over, the new South pole formed in South-America. The new equator went along the south of australia, through West-Africa and the south of what used to be the United States of North-America.

And Greenland got a lovely climate...

For millions of years Greenland, the largest island in the world, was covered under a kilometers thick icecap. But after the earth tilted, and the short Ice-Age was over, Greenland received the great miracle. The icecap started to melt. It went quite fast, because it became warmer and more comfortable year after year. Giant glaciers slid grating with increasing speed into the ocean, calved into icebergs that drifted south and melted away - because the equator had come to lie so much higher in that part of the world. The high mountain ridge that went over the middle of Greenland ~~_(which wikipedia says, doesn't actually exist, according to later research. The middle of Greenland is actually below sea level, but excuse Thea's 80's knowledge)_~~ came into view. First the tops, later the slopes and valleys. The melting ice left grit, stones and fertile earth behind. Newly formed rivers cut their bedding in glacier-made U-shaped valleys, or filled them with clear water. The Greenlanders that had managed to survive the consecutive disasters, formed a population consisting of a mix of Inuit (Eskimos) ( ~~ _I'm sorry that's what it_~~ _says)_ , Danish, American and Native American peoples. It was a small population; Greenland had at the time of the Great Disaster a population of about fifty thousand souls and many of those had died. But a few thousand survived and formed the core for a new people. At first a lot of sick of deformed children were born with little survival chances, but the Greenlanders, used to harsh circumstances, managed to endure the horrors of the small Ice-Age, the famine and lack of comfort. And as the climate on their island became milder and the children healthier, hope shone again for them. They gave their Island a new name: Thule, and their heritage was still visible on their faces. Many Thuleneans had dark, a bit small eyes, a compact build, short legs, broad shoulders. Others, with more Danish or American blood in their veins, were taller, had a lighter skin, grey or blue eyes, a high forehead. Mainly the women stood out: slender, with long wavy hair and a fine bone structure.

In this Thule, in this new land, which emerged after a disaster that destroyed most of the earth and almost became the end of the world population, this story plays out. And it starts with the Konega of Thule: Armina-Dottir, and with her only son: Christian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to find a map of Thule on the internet, because there is one in the book, but I could only find one in an article and it's barely visible, but if you're interested here is a link that hopefully works:
> 
> http://www.skript-ht.nl/files/archief/skriptbestandenbk/21/2/Schaap%20Wittenberg%20Beckman%2021.2.pdf?29e59c12ca 
> 
> It's on page 8.   
> The book cover is easy to find if you google ' kinderen van moeder aarde ' with the author's name: Thea Beckman. If you're interested in stuff like that. 
> 
> Please do excuse some of the language and terms used in the story, this was written in the 80s and times have changed. Thea Beckman herself died in 2004.


End file.
